Suzanne Donovan

Suzanne Donovan is Executive Director of the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) Institute, an education research and development enterprise incubated at the National Academies. In that capacity she is building a program of work in partnership with school districts, and anchored in classroom and school practice. She was primary author and co-editor of the two SERP reports: Strategic Education Research Partnership proposed the design and governance structure of the SERP Institute, and Learning and Instruction: A SERP Research Agenda details an illustrative research and development agenda directly tied to classroom practice.

Dr. Donovan has also directed the "How People Learn" project at the National Academies since 1999. She served as study director and editor of the most recent report in the series: How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom, which was published in January, 2005. She was director of a previous study entitled How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice. She has delivered addresses on this work to audiences of teachers and researchers across the nation.

Dr. Donovan was the study director and co-editor for the NRC report Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education, and was a co-editor of Eager to Learn: Educating our Preschoolers. She has a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley. Before joining the National Research Council, she was on the faculty of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.